This blogpost was written on Saturday March 7th.

The first week of negotiations on the terms of the future relationship between the EU and the UK after the end of 2020 transition year opened this week in Brussels. The previous week both sides published their negotiating mandates. The EU mandate can be found here. The UK´s here.

Leave to one side the technicalities of tariffs, quotas, rules of origin and so on, the small stuff of trade negotiations. “Zoom out” and see the big picture. And the big picture is this: the UK is leaving the EU. The UK decided to leave. It was its decision and its decision alone. It was not pushed out or asked to leave.

All the consequences of Brexit flow from the UK´s decision.

The UK is walking away from the deal it now has, as an EU member, of frictionless trade in goods, liberalised access for the services sector, and full integration into intra-EU data flows covering individuals, businesses, and justice and security matters. The UK government has now accepted that any future deal will be worse than this, will generate border delays and frictions, will curb services access and disrupt data flows.

Business will take a hit, in some cases a very big hit (see below). But, as is it right, the current UK government has privileged sovereignty and law-making autonomy over economic and commercial considerations.

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